Wednesday Wonders: A Recipe That Passed The Test!!

 Recently I saw a few episodes of Brand New Vegan on YouTube.  Also I saw someone reviewing recipes from Chuck Underwood's book about vegan comfort foods.  Since Dear One is leaning more towards plants again, I decided to give another look at Brand New Vegan.  This the recipe I tried:

My Grandson's Favorite Air Fried Tofu (I will let you go to the link to get the actual recipe...)

Extra firm tofu (I used Super Firm tofu in case I did not have time to press it, which time I did have so it was a moot issue...)

For the marinade:

Soy sauce
Vegetable broth (I used water and some  teriyaki sauce to give it a little flavor)
Minced garlic
Rice vinegar
Maple syrup
Cornstarch

For the "breading":

Granulated garlic

Granulated onion

Smoked paprika

Cornstarch

These are the ingredients from Chuck's recipe.  The process is to slice the block of tofu in half horizontally and set it to draining on paper towels on top of a cutting board with another cutting board and more paper towels on top then a heavy item. I used the cute little 6" Lodge cast iron skillet and the even cuter heart-shaped  Lodge cast iron skillet as the pressing agents.

Chuck puts the marinade ingredients in a quart jar with a cover then adds the pressed  and diced tofu and shakes and lets rest, shakes and lets rest, for a quite a while so the tofu can soak up the flavor.

Next he puts the breading into a gallon ziplock bag along with the drained-from-the-marinade-tofu and shakes gently until all the tofu is covered in the breading.  Bake 400 degrees F in an air fryer for 15-20 minutes, shaking the basket every five minutes to keep from sticking.

At that point I varied from his plan.  We had some leftover matchstick carrots, half a sliced sweet onion, and half a chopped red pepper.  I poured a tiny bit of olive oil in the frying pan, added the vegetables and started cooking them while the tofu was in the air fryer.  By the time the tofu was about done, so were the vegetables cooked enough to be pleasant to eat. I added the tofu and the leftover marinade to the pan and cooked until all the vegetables and tofu were nicely covered with sauce.

Finally I poured this over some Ramen noodles I had cooked in plain water without the seasoning packet and mixed them all together.

I put it on the table and let Dear One serve himself.  He took a serving.  Then he took ANOTHER serving.  And if that was not enough, he said, "This is pretty good."  That is not something we hear in this house very often!  Made me happy.

This is not a good picture but you get the idea.  Go for it. It really is pretty good.